More government waste

The huge, some might say too huge, £12.4 billion project to overhaul of the National Health Service computer systems has been a disaster from the beginning. This project has been over budget and behind schedule almost from day 1. Now I learn that Richard Granger, the previous head of the project who earned over £270,000 a year, who resigned last year will be succeeded in the role by two people. Christine Connelly and Martin Bellamy will each be paid around £200,000 a year (so increasing the cost to the taxpayer by around 40%). Ms Connelly will be the first Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Health and will focus on developing and delivering the Department’s “overall information strategy and integrating leadership across the NHS and associated bodies”, whilst Mr Bellamy will become Director of Programme and System Delivery, head of the agency called NHS Connecting for Health, responsible for the National Project for IT (NPfIT) to create 50 million electronic patient records among other overhauls of NHS systems.

An extra £130,000 a year is of course peanuts compared to the cost overruns the project has suffered so far. Does anyone believe the project will come in on budget now?

I predict Burning Our Money will cover this srory over the next few days.